Welcome to Seahorse Class

Please find below a copy of Mr Dickenson's presentation on Year 2.

Week 1 

Firstly can I say how impressed we are with your children with how well they settled in to Year 2 this week. As well as getting used to weekly routines in Year 2 the children have also shown great passion and courage in the work they have done in their first week back.

English - Dougal's deep sea diary

We started our first writing journal this week. The children showed they were great at coming up with different ways of asking questions when slowly revealing the front cover of the book and using different sentence starters. We also used a zone of relevance to sort words in order of impact to show how Dougal felt in the story as well as choosing effective words when sequencing the story too.

Maths - Number, place value and estimation

This week the children have been working really hard on honing their place value skills. Firstly the children used their knowledge of number values to solve "guess the number" riddles before estimating a number of objects in a large quantity before counting to see if their estimations were correct.  This then led into the children estimating where numbers would appear on a blank numberline and ordering non sequential numbers according to their place value.

Science - Longitudinal study - living things and their habitats in our local environment.

Mid week during the copious amounts of thunderstorms we had; one of our trees on the field was hit by a lightning strike. When it was safe to do so, we went out and investigated and had a fantastic discussion on whether or not the tree was still alive despite being struck by lightning - looking for clues to support our arguments. This led to us exploring what all living things need to survive which we will explore further and try to find evidence of in our field over the next coming weeks. 

Geography - Where in the world are we?

This week the children impressed us by sharing what they had remembered about the world from Year R and 1 - naming all 7 continents and 5 oceans. We then looked closer to home by locating the UK on Google Earth and then being able to name the 4 countries that make up the UK and their cities. The children were then set the task of using their knowledge of what is around them geographically to approximately locate Catherington and Portsmouth on a map.

PE - High and low parts

This week the children did some fantastic floor work through exploring how to use and move different body parts to be as high and as low as they could be. First the children explored which body parts they could stretch to make themselves as high as possible and how they would move before changing and looking at their bodies moved when they were as low as possible. The children then were set the challenge of combining high and low movements to move across the hall.

Week 2

English - Expanded noun phrases

This week the children were developing their knowledge of expanded noun phrases by labelling nouns from a picture of Atlantis and then creating lists of suitable, high level adjectives to describe their nouns. We then used these to create fantastic expanded noun phrase sentences which we then used when we planned our postcards to the other classes.

Maths - Identifying and recognising numbers

This week in maths we have been looking at how numbers can be shown in different ways. For example - 20 could be 20p, or 20cm. It can be 2 lots of 10, 4 lots of 5, 10 lots of 2, or even 20 lots of 1. We also looked at how we can represent these numbers using number lines, whole part models, bar models, arrays, and dienes and ones. The children showed great team work when they were set the challenge of matching numbers to different representations. We then looked at how patterns were created when we added or subtracted 10 more or less from given numbers.

Geography - Comparing a village and a city

As the children had a good knowledge of Catherington and why it is a village, we looked at our key question of "why do people choose cities over villages?" This got us talking about our nearest city of Portsmouth and we looked at the different things we could see and do in Portsmouth compared to Catherington.

Computing - What do we use ICT for?

This week in computing we looked at many different forms of ICT equipment we may find in our homes and then explored and sorted the equipment by their different purposes.

Science - Finding evidence of life on our field

After last weeks lesson where we explored what all living things needed to survive; this week we went out onto our field to investigate if we could find evidence to support our theories. Not only did we find living creatures, we also found different food sources and habitats.

Week 3

English - Writing Postcards

The children blew us away with their amazing postcards they created this week. Not only did they plan, write and edit them - they also wrote them out in their neatest writing. The children then went around the school delivering their postcards to who they had written them to around the school.

Maths - Number bonds and 1/10 more and less

This week the children showed they were could at working systematically when given the challenge of finding ALL of the number bonds to 10 and 20. The children then used this information to help them work out what 1/10 more of a number was and what 1/10 less of a number was.

Cauliflower cards

With just over 90 days left until Christmas (sorry) the children designed and created their Christmas cards for the company Cauliflower card company to turn into actual cards.

PSHE - Problem solving

Over the last couple of weeks we have being thinking about how we can use our school values to create a classroom environment that everybody would be happy in. This led to the children creating their own classroom rules which everyone in the class, including the grown ups signed and agreed to. This week we used these in a practical context when role playing different problem scenarios that the children may face during school and working together to act out the best way to resolve the situations positively.

Geography - Human and Physical features of Portsmouth City

This week we focussed on the different landscapes in and around Portsmouth City. The children were set the challenge of identifying as many different physical and human features they could spot from aerial photographs of the city.

PE - Gymnastics - High and low body parts

This week the children used what they had learnt from the floor work in previous weeks and applied them on different apparatus. The children had to focus on points of contact and balance to help them achieve high and low body parts.

Week 4

Maths - problem solving

This week the children have been working really hard on using their number bond and number fact knowledge along with different methods of working out to problem solve. The children had missing number problems along with word problems to solve. We also developed our understanding of why we use methods to solve problems to help us check our answers and correct any mistakes. Although sometimes a sum may seem simple, by mastering methods we are able to solve more complex calculations by breaking them down and working through them.

English - verbs and adverbs

We started our second writing journey this week using the poetry book "Commotion in the ocean". We started by creating amazing adjective word banks for different sea creatures taking into account their appearance and personalities. The children then built on their expanded noun phrase knowledge by exploring adding verbs and adverbs to sentences to help readers visualise our writing. We also looked at the power of adding the suffix -ly and how by doing this we can change an adjective into an adverb and explored the different spelling rules.

Design and Technology - Wheels and Axils

This week the children explored how axils help wheels move. The children had a variety of axils to use and explored how the strength of an axil and the position of an axil when it is connected to a wheel effect the stability and movement of an object.

Geography - Human and Physical features

This week the children carried on focussing on human and physical features by locating as many different types of these features in a familiar environment - our field. 

PE - Gymnastics

This week the children were set the challenge of using the floor and apparatus in different ways whilst trying to keep their bottoms the highest and then lowest part of their body. The children then combined these positions and movements into one transitional movement and explored how it would effect their movement on different apparatus and how they had to adjust their bodies and balance to achieve this.

Week 5

Mathematics - measurement and money

At the beginning of the week the children explored estimating and measuring different objects using the metric unit of centimetres. The children worked really well together and even helped Mr Dickenson open his wool shop by measuring and pricing the different lengths of wool according to their lengths. This led us nicely into money where we focused on finding different coin combinations to make a set amount and developed our step counting of 2's, 5's and 10's through money.